LEAGUE OF ELECTRONIC MUSICAL URBAN ROBOTS PERFORMS IN THE SECOND ANNUAL ARTBOTS: THE ROBOT TALENT SHOW AT EYEBEAM (NEW YORK CITY) JULY 12-13 BROOKLYN-BASED ARTS COLLABORATIVE WILL DEMONSTRATE GuitarBot, !rBot, TibetBot, and ShivaBot; GROUP COMBINES ARTISTIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION TO CREATE ROBOTIC MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS THAT "PLAY THEMSELVES" WHO: LEMUR, League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots WHERE: Eyebeam Atelier, 540 W. 21st Street, New York City WHEN: 12:00PM-6:00PM, Saturday and Sunday, July 12 & 13 TICKETS: FREE LEMUR will present its musical robots in performance at the second annual ArtBots weekend extravaganza at Eyebeam Atelier in Chelsea on July 12 & 13. LEMUR - League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots - is a Brooklyn-based group of artists and technologists developing robotic musical instruments. Having completed work under a Rockefeller Foundation grant awarded to the group in 2001, LEMUR has recently presented its robots at several high visibility events. Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center commissioned a collaborative work with New York composer Joshua Fried; it debuted in May 2002 at Harvestworks and was later performed at Soho's Hear Arts Center. Wired magazine will be highlighting ShivaBot in its July 2003 ArtBots article. LEMUR instruments have been demonstrated at various academic symposia and institutions, including the Second International Conference on Entertainment Computing at Carnegie Mellon University and the 2003 International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. LEMUR's philosophy is to build robotic instruments that "play themselves." "In LEMUR designs, the robots are the instruments. We are less interested in creating humanoid robots that emulate humans playing instruments," explains LEMUR founder and director Eric Singer. "Rather, we seek to create machines which intimately integrate the instruments with the robotics. Musical robots are most engaging when playing in ways which humans can't or don't normally play. This has been one of our guiding design principles." To date, LEMUR has created four musical robots. GuitarBot, an electric stringed instrument, is comprised of four independently controllable stringed units which can pick and slide extremely rapidly. It is designed to extend - not simply duplicate - the capabilities of a human guitarist. !rBot (pronounced "chick-r-bot") fuses traditional musical instruments with mechanical design. Inspired by the human mouth, its malleable cavity opens to expose and play a Peruvian goat-hoof rattle. TibetBot is a robotically controlled percussive instrument that creates atonal rhythms and tonal droning soundscapes. It is designed around three Tibetan singing bowls, which are struck by six robotic arms, producing a wide range of timbres. ShivaBot is a four-armed six-foot tall drumming robot, based on the Indian god Shiva and designed around a traditional Indian lap drum. It also accommodates a variety of drums and other percussion instruments, such as bells, chimes and cymbals. LEMUR's robots are controlled by custom developed MIDI technology. Using MIDI, the instruments can be played individually or as an ensemble. They can be played live by humans from input devices such as a keyboard, or from a computer playing pre-composed musical scores. In addition, the robots are particularly compelling when they are played using computer-generated improvisation. LEMUR founder Eric Singer is a Brooklyn-based musician, artist, engineer and programmer with nearly 20 years of arts and multimedia programming, engineering and performance experience in the areas of interactive performance, music and graphics systems, alternative instruments, networked multimedia environments and computer-controlled pyrotechnics. He holds a BS in Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon; a Diploma in Music Synthesis (Magna Cum Laude) from Berklee College of Music; and an MS in Computer Science from New York University. He has performed and lectured throughout the U.S. and Europe with electronic musical instruments. He is an accomplished musician who has toured and recorded with many bands including Metro Stylee, The Slackers and The Allstonians, on tenor, alto, and baritone saxes. He is a founding member of the Brooklyn-based arts collaborative The Madagascar Institute, and he has contributed to many of the group's spectacular projects. He was captain of the Madagascar Institute's team "The Brooklyn Benders" which made it to the semi-finals on The Learning Channel's 'Junkyard Wars' television show. He also currently works as an independent arts engineer and consultant and is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the NYU Interactive Telecommunication Program. LEMUR is Eric Singer, David Bianciardi, Kevin Larke, Jeff Feddersen, Milena Iossifova, Michelle Cherian, Brendan J. FitzGerald, Ahmi Wolf, Chad Redmon, Kyle Lapidus and Jonathan Huggins. More information about LEMUR members, including contributions and expertise, is available upon request. LEMUR collaborators are available for interviews. Photos are also available. Visit LEMUR's website at lemurbots.org.